A 37-year-old man’s sudden lapse into mania and paranoia eludes diagnosis until a final clue emerges. Kurt, like many patients brought to the psychiatric emergency room, arrived at the hospital in handcuffs. “We’ve got a streaker,” said the triage nurse. On a cold December evening, something sent this 37-year-old man running naked through the streets. Kurt had argued with the staff at the rental office in his apartment complex. When they threatened to evict him if he ...read more

And millions of lives may be at risk. Just 10 kilometers from the frenetic pulse of central Naples, in stark contrast to the Italian city’s impressive volcanic-stone churches and effortlessly stylish urbanites, sits a boxy, concrete building. Inside this unremarkable government outpost, accessed through a pair of sliding glass doors, is the Vesuvius Observatory monitoring room, lit by the cool glow of 92 flat-panel screens. On each screen, volcanic activity readings, including those f ...read more

It takes a lot of pressure to recreate an erection like this. Photo by Vladimir Wrangel Perhaps the hardest part about studying marine mammal reproductive anatomy using organs collected from deceased animals is that they can’t get an erection the easy way. Reinflating human penises postmortem is a relatively trivial feat, says Diane Kelly, a research assistant professor at University of Massachusetts and penis inflation expert. Like most mammal ...read more

A drone hovers for a few seconds in the whale’s blow to collect a sample.(Credit: Michael Moore, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) While the SnotBot drone has been highly publicized for its aerial maneuvers over blowholes, but its expeditions have yet to showcase some hard data about whales. But there’s another whale snot-gathering team out there using drones—and they’ve turned those misty explosions into some interesting biological data about whales. After collectin ...read more

A comb jelly. (Credit: Kondratuk Aleksei/Shutterstock) In the debate over what the first animal was, it comes down to sponge vs. jelly. And in recent years, researchers worked to settle the score in scientific journals, publishing competing genetic analyses that purport to show either one or the other was the first to diverge from our last common ancestor. This would make it a sister lineage to all other animals, and enshrine it as our most distant relative in the Animal Kingdom. The most ...read more

Canadian Bacon Donut Complimentary of Portobello Cafe in Whistler, Canada. This donut provides many examples of the Maillard reaction. When frying the donut batter, high temperatures promote browning of the dough and also impart crispiness. Secondly, the bacon!  the flavors in bacon are the result of Maillard reaction products. The browning of the bacon creates and releases flavnoids. Photo Credit: Steven Du Guest post by Steven Du The flavor reaction.  What makes bread crust brown an ...read more

(Credit: Shuttershock) Coal, it’s the sooty fossil fuel that’s heated our homes and generated electricity for centuries, but millions of years ago its formation could’ve frozen the planet. Coal deposits formed from dead trees and plants roughly 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. During that timeframe, Earth was largely a hot, sticky planet covered in swampy jungles. Levels of CO2 reached 1,000 ppm, which is more than twice the l ...read more

The nose knows more than you think. Imagine walking into a meeting room. You shake hands with colleagues, then everyone sits down. Within seconds they all start sniffing their palms, picking up clues about you from the chemical traces left over from the handshakes. Sniffing palms after a handshake, usually within 30 seconds of the interaction, would likely help people learn about someone’s health and genetic compatibility, according to a 2015 study by researchers in Israel. Sniffing c ...read more

A global, decade-long poaching epidemic has conservationists wondering how long the animals will survive. Amid a decade-long global rhino poaching epidemic, many conservationists wonder how long the animal will survive in the wild. Rhinos are killed for their horns, which are sold illegally in Vietnam and China — at street prices higher than gold — for their purported medicinal qualities. For example, just in South Africa, rhino poaching incidents skyrocketed over 9,000 percent, ...read more